The Rope Walk (24 page)

Over the weeks of her reading aloud to Kenneth and Theo from the accounts of Lewis and Clark's adventures, the strangeness of that new world and its inhabitants had been taking shape in her mind: the mysterious mound rising from the flat line of the prairie, thought by the Indians to be inhabited by demons eighteen inches tall and armed with spears; the peculiar tribe of the Flathead Indians, whose broad, compressed brows were obtained by clamping infants’ heads between two boards; the ghastly ceremonial capes of the Chopunnish Indians, made of human scalps and ornamented with the dangling fingers and thumbs of warriors killed in battle. For Lewis and Clark, the world had produced an endless chain of danger and heroics, the assault of a giant black panther, the desperate predicament of men who clung above the white froth of one-hundred-foot falls, gashing handholds in the cliff walls with their knives in order to climb to safety. Everywhere they went the men were threatened, attacked, driven onward (or back) by mosquitoes or beasts, raging waters, snow and ice, disease, even irrational fear.

Now, as Alice stood by Theo's side and imagined cutting a trail among the trees for Kenneth, someplace he might set his uncertain feet, the woods seemed tame, domesticated by comparison with the wilderness encountered by Lewis and Clark. She
stood quietly with Theo's hand on her shoulder, just as Clark must have stood beside his friend Lewis, she thought, the two comrades staring out at the shadows of the clouds racing over the plains, the herds of bison that moved over the brown earth in the far distance like swarms of bees or pools of spilled ink.

They were doing something good here, she hoped, something difficult and grown-up. And yet in the deep silence of the woods before them like a held breath, in the way her eye could find no final resting place, no end through the trees, in the solemn shafts of light that fell as though into a cavernous chamber, she felt awfully small somehow. Perhaps Lewis and Clark had felt that, too.

It was harder work than they had anticipated. To hold the ropes in place, they discovered they had to nail through them into the trunks of the trees; otherwise the ropes slipped and sagged toward the ground. And cutting a path was filthy, difficult business; they came away from their labors scratched and bleeding, their hands raw, welts rising on their arms and legs. But after a week, they looked back toward the Fitzgeralds’ house and saw that they were well out of sight—maybe even earshot—of it, and that the path they had hacked through the brush was clear and smooth: a sleepwalker could have moved down it, gliding like a wraith. As they drew deeper into the woods, the going became a little easier. Here a deep sea of leafy cover spread over the ground, the neat thickness of the pile choking out the undergrowth, and the trees rose up around them like stanchions for a huge bridge. They did not talk much during their labors, beyond complaining cheerfully about the difficulty of the task, a way of confirming for each other and for themselves the virtue of the
work, its heroic proportion. Theo backed away from the trail with vines gripped between his hands, staggering from side to side as though he was wrestling an alligator. Alice, on her knees, hacked away at roots. Sweat ran down her face.

Before too many days had gone by, Alice could hear the sound of the river from their position in the woods, though she could not yet see its silver spine through the trees. She could not exactly get her bearings. She had never walked down to the water from the Fitzgeralds’ house, and though she thought their property was well above Indian Love Call, she could not be sure, and it made her a little uneasy that their path might be leading them in that direction. She noticed that the ground had become rockier, too. Now they spent as much time prying stones from the path with a shovel as they did trimming back branches to make the way clear, piling up cairnlike heaps beside the trail. Every so often they would close their eyes and take hold of the rope and start to follow the path, exactly as they expected Kenneth would. It was a strange feeling to walk with one's eyes closed, one's fingers slipping along the rope. Alice needed all her courage to keep her eyes shut, for her instinct was to open them at the least resistance underfoot or sound amid the trees. She did not understand why having one's eyes closed made the ground seem so unstable and why it felt like standing on the tilting deck of a ship, but each time she had to will herself to go forward after just a few steps. Theo pointed out that Kenneth could see
something
—it wasn't as if he was as blind as they were with their eyes closed—and so the experience wouldn't be so hard for him. Sometimes theyjust stood quietly and felt the wind on their faces and listened for what they could hear, the sibilant whisper of the leaves, the occasional cry of a bird. One day a pair of enormous pileated woodpeckers scared them to death, the giant birds starting
up suddenly from a nearby tree and flapping through the branches overhead, their raw cries of alarm ringing through the woods.

The children returned to the house in the late afternoons filthy and silent with fatigue.

“What are you doing out there all day?” Elizabeth asked them suspiciously one night, as she set plates of chicken potpie before their streaked faces.

Glancing up from her plate, Alice was alarmed to see that Eli, who had joined them for dinner, was watching them curiously.

“You guys building a fort?” he asked Alice now.

“Mmmhmm,” Alice did not raise her eyes to look at him. She shoveled chicken into her mouth. She did not want to lie about what they were doing, but she did want to keep it a secret, a surprise. They would all be amazed at what she and Theo had accomplished. She was amazed herself.

“So, where is it?” Eli reached for the butter dish. “Down by the river?”

“We can't tell you!” Theo said quickly.

Alice's head shot up; he had spoken too anxiously, too vehemently. That note of desperation in his voice—his fear that they would be discovered—had been a dead giveaway.

Eli held up his hands as if to ward off further attack.

“They're out hunting for buried treasure.” Elizabeth came to the table and pulled out the chair next to Alice's. “They're digging a big, big hole to China, right?” She reached out and tousled Alice's hair.

Every night, after baths and dinner, Alice and Theo fell asleep as though someone had administered drugs directly to their veins. They left their filthy clothes in trails over the floor; they
abandoned damp towels by the tub; they left filthy handprints on the sink. Sometimes after dinner they lay side by side on their stomachs on Alice's bed and tried to read a book together, but Alice was a much faster reader than Theo. It was annoying to have to ask, “Finished? Finished
now?”
over and over again every time she was ready to turn the page, though Theo never seemed to take offense at her impatience. He just said that he wanted to read the same thing she was reading, resorting to a sly and illogical flattery to get her to agree to this foolishness; she could
help
him if he didn't understand something, he said.

They could have read the same book but at different times and she could still have helped him, Alice wanted to point out but didn't. She couldn't figure out exactly why—or exactly when— Theo would want to be close to her, his hip bumped up against hers, his foot toying with her ankle. Sometimes he reached out absently and plucked one of her curls, watching as it sprang back into position. Sometimes he seemed off in his own world somewhere, and she had to repeat questions, startling him out of a reverie. But often he seemed to Alice almost like an extension of herself, and his physical presence beside her—even when he was jiggling with impatience, one leg going up and down as if he were operating a treadle, a habit she found annoying—had become as familiar to her as her own hand held before her face.

Sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night to find her cheek pressed to the book's smooth, cool page, Theo's breath puffing gently into the back of her neck. He still smelled rewardingly to her like her coat pocket, and like grass, and— she struggled to identify it from within the refined family of smells—something a little sour, like a pinecone.

He smelled like himself.

• • •

Days went by without them seeing Archie. Alice and Theo were sleeping later than he was in the mornings now, and he was often gone to Frost by the time they came downstairs, eager to hurry through their breakfast and get outside, back to the rope walk. Archie had been away for three days at a conference somewhere and then occupied with something at Frost in the evenings or going straight from work to the hospital to check in on Helen. One morning, however, he was still at the breakfast table when Alice and Theo came clattering downstairs. He set down the newspaper when they came into the kitchen.

“Are you my daughter?” Archie leaned across the table and held Alice's chin in his hand. When he touched her she suffered a sudden wave of longing for him, his magician's white hair, even his sad eyes. She had been missing him, she thought, without even knowing it.

“Hmm,” he went on speculatively. “You look like Alice, but I haven't seen her in so long I can't be sure.” He dropped her chin, kissed his thumb, and pressed it to the tip of her nose. “Hello,” he said.

“It's Alice, all right,” Theo said complacently. He reached for the box of Cheerios on the table and began pouring messily into his bowl. Cheerios bounced across the floor.

“Thank you for that confirmation, Theo,” Archie said. He leaned back in his chair and held his coffee mug in his hands. “Elizabeth tells me you've been extremely busy excavating a tunnel to China.”

“Ha!” Theo crowed triumphantly, as if this assertion of Elizabeth's proved that their secret was safe. And then he immediately glanced guiltily at Alice. Too late, he saw that no response would have been the wiser rejoinder.

Alice noticed her father watching Theo. After a minute
Archie spoke again. “You've been neglecting your friend Mr. Fitzgerald.”

Now it was Alice's turn to look stricken. They had not been to see Kenneth in over a week now. She was not sure how many days they had been working on the rope walk. Nine, ten? Of course he would feel neglected; she saw that now, and she felt foolish. There were too many things to consider while attempting something heroic, she thought. How were you supposed to remember everything all at once? Kenneth didn't know that they'd been building the rope walk for him, and it hadn't even occurred to them that he might have been missing them … he had been so much in their thoughts every day that it did not seem possible that he could have felt forgotten.

Alice felt Archie's eyes resting carefully on her. The familiar telltale heat had risen into her cheeks.

“He called last night, wondering if perhaps you'd been borne away by fairies.” Archie was watching Alice now.

“We didn't forget him,” Alice mumbled into her plate. She didn't dare look at Theo.

There was silence at the table for a moment and then Archie said, “Well, perhaps you could go over there today and reassure him that you are still among the living.”

Alice nodded. “Okay,” she said. She still didn't look up.

“And … how is the piano? Have you been practicing?” Archie asked her then.

Alice knew she was turning scarlet now. She hadn't touched the piano since before her birthday.

“No,” she said reluctantly. Yet suddenly, she wanted to play. Her fingers practically itched. She hadn't even thought about practicing these last few weeks. Theo had made her forget about everything. For a moment she felt a little flare of anger toward
him, as if he had persuaded her to misbehave, and now she'd been caught. But a moment later her conscience corrected her. She had not been able to think of anything except Theo and their plans ever since he had arrived, but that had not been Theo's fault. She had been completely willing. Yet, how could she so easily have abandoned her old self? she wondered. What had happened to that early riser, the one who sat happily at the piano for an hour or more? (And whose skill was gratifyingly noted by Archie and Wally, praises she loved to hear?) What had happened to Helen, to the people and things she used to care about? She hadn't even written to Wally or James, and she always used to remember to send them pictures and letters. For a moment, desolation spread over her, like waking after a nightmare horribly uncertain about what was true and what was only a dream; had she lost something unrecoverable? And if so, what was it? She blinked down at her plate, her eyes prickling again. And
why
, oh
why
was she crying all the time?

Archie was silent for a moment, though she could feel him looking at her. “I'll be home for dinner tonight,” he said finally, as though concluding something. “I may even come home early this afternoon.”

“Okay.” Alice flicked her gaze over to Theo. He had wolfed down his bowl of Cheerios and now sat across from her, tense as a greyhound, jiggling one foot, ready to go. There was a Cheerio stuck to the front of his T-shirt.

“Ready?” he said.

Alice slid out of her chair and came around the table to put her arms around Archie, duck her head under his chin.

“O, she would sing the savageness out of a bear
,” Archie said softly, and kissed her on the back of her neck.

• • •

After breakfast, Alice and Theo ran practically the entire way to the Fitzgeralds’. The cool morning air was invigorating; Alice felt comforted and reassured by the sunshine, the delicious-smelling fresh tar on the street across from Barrett and Rita's general store, the heady gasoline fumes that made the air around the pump shimmer in wavering bands of heat when someone stopped to fill up a car with gas. There was a plant sale taking place on the lawn of the library, where baskets of trailing geraniums and pink and white and purple striped petunias hung in the branches of the dogwood trees. At the art gallery across the street from the library, watercolor paintings had been set up on a folding screen on the sidewalk.

There were only a dozen or so commercial buildings along Grange's Main Street, and Alice had been inside all of them at least once: the general store and gas station, the town library, a tiny post office with a wall of ornate old brass post office boxes, the art gallery, a brick building with a lawyer's office on the second floor and a real estate business on the first, a medical and dental clinic in a white Victorian house with a porch on the second story, the town's office building and tiny police station, which shared an entrance, and the volunteer fire station. At the end of Main Street, across the village green from the narrow spire of the Episcopal church, stood a handsome restaurant and hotel popular with tourists called the Grange Inn. In a tradition begun by Alice's mother, Archie took Alice and the boys here for Christmas Eve dinner every year; the maple trees on the green were strung with twinkling lights, and Alice had baked Alaska for dessert and helped herself from bowls of oranges and ribbon candy and peppermint sticks. This ritual meal, with no light in the low-ceilinged dining room except from the candles and the fireplace with its mantel heaped with holly and pine boughs, filled Alice every year with a sense of well-being and pleasure so
intense that it stole the power of speech from her. She sat beside Archie with shining eyes, watching the faces of her brothers, watching as the heavy white plates were lowered, steam rising, to the table, the golden bubbles sparkling and colliding in Archie's glass of champagne.